Mangling the English language since 1985

February: Spread Love – Picture a Day (6)

My February Project is Picture a Day. Something inspiring, something cool, something to make you smile or think.

Day 6

Today’s picture of the day is of Anne Spencer (born February 6, 1882), American poet, in her wedding dress. Anne was the first African American poet to be featured in the Norton Anthology of American Poetry. She was valedictorian of the class of 1899 at Virginia Seminary, despite not starting formal schooling until age 11. Besides writing poetry, she was a gardener and activist and hosted many dignitaries at her home in Virginia including Langston Hughes, Martin Luther King, Jr., George Washington Carver, and W.E.B. DuBois.

Translation

– Anne Spencer (1882 – 1975)

He trekked into a far country,
My friend and I.
Our deeper content was never spoken,
But each knew all the other said.
He told me how calm his soul was laid
By the lack of anvil and strife.
“The wooing kestrel," I said, “mutes his mating-note
To please the harmony of this sweet silence.”
And when at the day’s end
We laid tired bodies ‘gainst
The loose warm sands,
And the air fleeced its particles for a coverlet;
When star after star came out
To guard their lovers in oblivion —
My soul so leapt that my evening prayer
Stole my morning song!